Portfolio Systems Engineer

About the Implementation Department  

The Investment Implementation department is a community of diverse investment professionals whose mission is to implement our investment strategies and client portfolios excellently. Our Department is responsible for ensuring the excellent implementation of our systematic investment approach, from raw data to executed trades, with processes and logic that reflect the full richness of our investment insight, executed with a near-zero error rate, and engineered and orchestrated in a way that facilitates oversight and compounding. This is an investment department, owning the investment outcomes, and the mandate includes both the ‘run’ responsibility and the ‘transform’ responsibility, meaning daily operations as well as over time renovation of our systems.    

We fulfill our mission by applying four operating principles:    

• Understand and deliver internal client needs. Partner with our internal clients to understand, offer implementation designs, and deliver solutions, while proactively educating and communicating outcomes to ACLs (Asset Class Leads) and CIOs.    
• Own our investment intent. Own our investment intent in full, in letter and spirit.      
• Continuously improve. Have and evolve an investment pipeline to meet current and future internal client needs.      
• Systematically and relentlessly deliver quality outcomes. Apply our best logic systematically, discipline, expertise, and controls to every signal, position, and trade in every market.  

About Your Role  

We are an Engineering owned and led organization which strives to balance independence with incredible community support in an environment that is intellectually vibrant and driven to make a mark on the world as a collaborative force. As a Portfolio Systems Engineer on the Portfolio Implementation team, your mission is to design, build, and evolve the complex, large-scale systems that manage money at the size and scale Bridgewater does — from Risk Controls through to Trade Generation. You will spend your time architecting and industrializing the investment systems that run our portfolios and investment strategies. The Portfolio Systems Engineer will be embedded within the Portfolio Implementation Team and gain a key understanding of our portfolio construction logic, process, and systems. 

You will drive the following responsibilities:     

• Design, build and evolve the investment system that manages our portfolios from risk controls through to trade generation.  
• Translate investment goals and understanding into elegant and robust systematic logic.  
• Dive deep into the systems and learn the contents to perceive issues in our logic and translate those problems into business solutions.  
• Visualize different ways to streamline and industrialize our Portfolio Construction through trade delivery process.  
• Own and develop tools to oversee and validate our Portfolio Construction process.  
• Set and enforce high engineering standards for building robust, maintainable, large-scale systems across the Implementation team. 

The anticipated onsite requirement for this role is 4 days per week at our Westport, CT campus.  

Minimum Qualifications 

As a Portfolio Systems Engineer, you have a genuine passion for building complex software systems — you’re drawn to hard, interesting problems and enjoy designing systems that are robust, scalable, and built to last.    

• Have 2+ years of professional experience in a relevant engineering field and a Bachelor’s degree in Finance or a related field. 
• Have strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to troubleshoot complex issues and develop innovative solutions.  
• Have hands-on coding experience in any language — we care far more about how you build and your ability to learn than about any specific language.  
• Are eager to learn our investment concepts and language — e.g., security mechanics, portfolio construction, and how we model them — well enough to apply them in the systems you build.  
• Enjoy tinkering — you care not just about the work you produce but how you produce it, continually sharpening our tools and workflows (including leveraging AI) to work better and faster.  
• Are strong at prioritization and driving multiple workstreams in parallel. 
• Have excellent verbal and written communication skills and can translate technical concepts to different stakeholders.  
• Are practical and goal oriented so you can quickly interface with the various partners across the firm to perceive and solve problems.  
• Have a desire to use technology and engineering to solve real world business problems. 

About Bridgewater 

Bridgewater Associates is a global macro investment firm, founded in 1975, whose mission is to develop a fundamental, cause-and-effect understanding of how markets and economies work—and translate that understanding into insights, returns, and solutions that help the world’s leading institutional investors solve their most important investment challenges.  

Over five decades, we have codified our fundamental understanding into a systematic investment process—integrating human judgment with machine intelligence with the goal of applying our thinking consistently, testing it against reality, and continuously improving decision-making over time. We believe this has created a unique platform for applying AI within our process, positioning us at the frontier of integrating technology with investment decision-making.  

In financial markets—where reality is constantly evolving and outcomes are uncertain—sustained excellence requires continuous learning and improvement. Our culture—anchored in radical truth and transparency—helps us learn faster.  

Find more information about Bridgewater on our website. 

Our Culture 

Bridgewater’s culture is anchored in the pursuit of excellence—tied directly to our mission. In financial markets, where the base case is failure and reality is constantly evolving, winning requires continuous learning and improvement. Truth is our most essential tool for improvement, and transparency helps us get closer to truth because it places many eyes on our decisions, problems, and mistakes. By understanding reality clearly, we can identify the gap between where we are and where we want to be—and use that knowledge to learn and get better. Our system that supports this way of being is an idea meritocracy, where we commit to finding and rewarding the best ideas regardless of hierarchy.  

Operating in these ways is hard. Finding truth and learning through it is inherently a high-friction cycle. It’s possible because we share a few core values: a commitment to honesty, high ownership, deeply meaningful work and relationships, and building Bridgewater as a big tent where vast differences are welcomed. These values create the common denominator that binds us together in good times and bad.  

Benefits 

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits, including health insurance, retirement benefits, paid leave, and other fringe benefits. Find more information about Bridgewater’s benefits on our website.  

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations.   

Sponsorship 

The Portfolio Systems Engineer full time position requires the candidate to be eligible to work in the United States for a minimum of 3 years from the candidate’s start date. If visa sponsorship is required for any part of the three years, the successful candidate must demonstrate continuous, or eligibility to renew, work authorization in the United States for at least three years after the date of hire, without being subject to selection through a lottery process.   

Compensation 

The wage range for this role is $225,000 - $450,000 inclusive of base salary and discretionary target bonus. The expected base salary for this role is between 60% - 75% of this wage range.   

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment. 

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer